Who is Takashi Kotegawa?

Meet the Japanese Trading Legend

Today let’s talk about Takashi Kotegawa.​
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The Japanese trader who turned $13,000 into $150m.
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Let’s dive right in…

Takashi Kotegawa

Takashi was born in 1978 in the heart of Japan, not much is known about his early years, but it’s rumored he dropped out of University to focus exclusively on his trading.
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He started trading around 2000, with a little over $13k as an initial pot (1.6 million yen) and over time managed to turn that into a whopping $108 million…
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Takashi doesn’t buy Lambos, or $100k watches, and likes to keep a pretty low profile.
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It’s said he lives in a relatively modest Tokyo apartment, takes public transport, and doesn’t flash his cash.
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When asked about his success Takashi simply said:
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“I don’t think I’m special. I think it was a combination of timing, a bit of luck, and hard work that led to my success.”
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​“Buy and Forget” or “BNF” as he calls himself online has an aggressive trading style that has to be one of the most impressive I’ve seen…
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But what was his strategy?

Trading Strategy

There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll cover what I think are the most useful and share some resources with you that you can use to dig deeper if you like.

In the early days, Takashi would do what many stock traders did. He would use a scanner to look for the biggest movers on the day.

But he often found that he was too late to the move, so instead, he created a list of 50 stocks that had good price movements in the past.

Then he would monitor those stocks, looking for a reversal off the lows.

  • If he nailed one, he would look to hold for 2 to 3 days.
  • If it went against him, he would get stopped out on the same day and look for the next trade.

BIG TRADES

There were a few huge trades that made Takashi famous:

The first was when Mizuho Securities made a fat finger error in 2005.

Instead of selling 1 share of a company called J-Com at 610,000 yen per share, they placed an order to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen per share, more than the shares in issue.

(Now I can only assume there were no circuit breakers, trade busts, or halts at the time because the shares plummeted and Takashi managed to scoop up a boatload at the lows.)

The price rebounded and Takashi killed it.

LIVEDOOR SHOCK

The next incident was called the Livedoor shock.

Livedoor was one of the hot tech companies of the 2000s and in 2006 was investigated for fraud, market manipulation, and false accounting practices.

Uh oh…

That would be like NVDA being investigated now – the whole house of cards would crumble.

Anyway – our boy Takashi was well placed to capitalize on the sell-off.

And as the whole market collapsed he picked stocks he believed were being smacked down unnecessarily in the panic and again scooped up size at lows.

The market rebounded and he made a fortune.

Takashi was no doubt an amazing trader, he has the ability to stay calm, focus on his process, and grab grade-A opportunities while others are panicking.

If you want to learn more, I found a few videos covering him on YouTube – you can search for yourself.

But this two-parter from a channel called Mike Ser Trader does a good job of detailing his strategy in more depth.